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with the contrast in their own case. Twice, in 1856 and1878, Russia was compelled to lay the eastern questionbefore the great powers, whether belligerents or not;and in 1878 none save she herself had been one. Duringthe crisis of 1876-78 Ignatyev and the panslavs had donetheir best to force a Russian solution on Turkey and facethe West with an accomplished fact (see pp. 243-245, 283).They failed. Alexander II and his foreign ministerGorchakov were not prepared to defy Europe at thealmost certain expense of war with Great Britain andAustria-Hungary. Thus the eastern question was settledagain by the powers, not by Russia alone. But thecongress met at Berlin, not Paris as twenty years before.Prussia had become Germany, and Bismarck was thecentral figure in Europe in the stead of Napoleon III.This change was to transform the eastern questionduring the following generation. A second fundamentalchange was also occurring. The development of nationalismand other Western influences upon the BalkanChristians had gone so far that at Berlin Roumania,Serbia, and Montenegro were recognized as independentstates. Bulgaria, though cut down and divided, wasgiven a special status which was soon overturned by theBulgars: from 1887 she was in effect independent ofthe sultan, though not formally so until 1908.The independence of the Balkan states owed more toRussia than to any other power. Yet Russia did notreap the fruits she expected. For this there were variousreasons. The Crimean War and the stand of Disraeliand Andrassy against her in 1878 decided that the Balkansshould not be a Russian preserve. Russia was tsaristRussia, and in that capacity unpopular in the Balkans(cf. p. 245). The pull of the western world was verystrong in Roumania and Greece, considerable in Serbia,marked in Bulgaria after 1879 and especially 1886. Thenew states did not wish to be appendages of Russia orAustria-Hungary or any of the powers; they wanted' the Balkans for the Balkan peoples.' But their weaknesscompelled them to align themselves now with one power,now with another.On the other hand, the Balkans did not become the416